DailyDirt: You Have Won Second Prize In A Beauty Contest! Collect $10.

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

There are a lot of online contests, sponsored by all sorts of organizations (usually non-profits). Some of the contests are challenging, and others are just a little strange. Here are some examples that caught our eye.

Damnit PETA! You are like a scientist and a hippie stitched together at the kidney. Why can't you stick to cool ideas like this, and sensible meaningful stuff like your endocrine disruptor lobbying, and get some damn control over your creepy street teams.

Re: Re:

Actually from the sounds of things they're comparing it to fake chicken:

Judging of taste and texture will be performed by a panel of 10 PETA judges, who will sample the in vitro chicken prepared using PETA's own fried "chicken" recipe. The in vitro chicken must get a score of at least 80 when evaluated in order to win the prize.

I was liking the sound of it too but another of their conditions also makes me quite dubious about their honesty:

Manufacture the approved product in large enough quantities to be sold commercially, and successfully sell it at a competitive price in at least 10 states.

It would seem likely that a company would have to be quite some size to be selling in 10 states. They'd also likely be making 10's or even 100's of millions a year competing on an ethics standpoint (ie to vegetarians etc) without being able to "sell it at a competitive price" compared to "real" meat. And this needs to happen in 2 years to qualify for the award???

Re: Re:

Well you really wouldn't want to do that. As I'm sure you have to demonstrate your whole process it would be a lot of effort, and just so you understand in vitro IS real chicken. It's not an analogue, there are already tons of those that taste like chicken, chicken is actually easy. A brand I particularly like is called Quorn and it's like a commercial when people realize it's not chicken, red meat on the other hand really just can't get the flavor down. Red meat is actually really greasy if I accidentally eat it and kinda tastes gross.

Peta

You know I find it so weird how much avarice and rancor there is over PETA. Are they really any different than any other special interest group out there? People go out of their way to do 3 things, ask if it's healthy, ask why I do it and then proceed to tell me they could never do it. It's never changed in the 7 years I've been vegetarian. I know there are some obnoxious people out there, but most of us long term vegetarians don't push our views on anyone, it's too darned exhausting and the ridicule for being known as a vegetarian can be withering. I've had people try to sneak bacon in my food, tell me I'm a bad parent (We've got a VERY healthy baby girl), tell me there's no reason and try all these tactics to trick me and find some flaw in my beliefs.
Plain and simple the reason most vegetarians I've met decided to become vegetarians is that they want to cause the least amount of harm they can. As humans we are uniquely in a position that many of us actually can make a choice in what we eat. Through one choice we could effectively slow global warming (meat farms are one of the highest greenhouse gas producers), we can lessen the amount of pain we cause others on the planet and improve our health if you eat properly (though I'm not exactly the thinnest guy in the area). It's not the right choice for everyone, but even if you chose to have one vegetarian meal a week, say plain pizza, it would be like taking half a million cars off the road.
If something like that isn't for you make sure you hold your meat producers accountable for poisoning the environment(I wish this was hyperbole)Swine farmers and chicken farmers are notorious for how badly they treat the environment causing huge fish kills in the Mississippi river delta and causing algae blooms that kill off other ocean life, some of which is foodstuff, which in turn raises the price of that seafood.
Didn't mean to make that sound preachy, just sharing the reasons I chose to become vegetarian. So basically it all comes down to the same question, what choices are you willing and able to make to provide a better planet for the next generation. Any choices you make are ultimately yours make the choices you're able to live with.

Re:

I think a lot of the rancor is due to their appearance to care more for the rights of animals than the rights of humans. When it comes down to choosing between the two, they readily side with the animals.

I'm not a vegetarian but I'm friends with a few (and related to one) and haven't run into the preachiness that often gets attributed to them, for whatever that's worth.

Re: Re:

My hatred started with their "Apocalypse on a plate" campaign witch compared eating meat to the Holocaust (and trivializing the Holocaust). Then it blossomed into full blown detest when I found out they think I'm evil for having a pet cat (they call it slavery, and trivializing another horror of our past).